Ya don’t know, you just don’t know.
Note: I’m pretty sure that at the time Trump made those remarks, the Coast Guard was still hunkered down.
Monthly Archives: September 2017
The cost of commemorating 9/11 exceeds the benefit. Bin Laden, dead, continues to win.
This is a preface to the preface to a piece I wrote in 2011. I have only this to add:
First as an aside, I suspected Trump could win the presidency, most people simply said it was impossible. But nonetheless, I was just as shocked as anyone else.
Here’s the thing. American culture reacted to 9/11 in ways that are mostly harmful. Various aspects of culture tend to reside in specific, though often vaguely defined, entities, such as classes taught in schools, crap kids say to each other on playgrounds, religious ceremony, TV shows, etc. Sometimes parts of culture tend to hold, brew, evolve, hybrid, and occasionally exude specific aspects of culture. For example, everybody walks around saying “boohya” (well, not everybody…). This is an example of a widely used expression that comes out of a part of military culture. Big metro areas like New York and LA put out cultural tropes all the time. That sort of thing.
Well, I’m pretty sure that many of the bad cultural traits that evolved in our post-9/11 reactionary world, discussed below, now reside in what we can probably safely and accurately label as the Deplorable Right. Also called “The Base” this is the group of people who voted for Trump in 2016, and will vote for him again as many times as they can, the ones that say, “Yeah, Russians taking over is good” and who don’t care much about, or know much about, Democracy. The “get her drunk and get her done” crowd. The people who will vote for Trump again and again mainly because it annoys everyone else, and not for any other reason. The people some misguided analysts require us to somehow embrace and cater to. They don’t exist because of 9/11, and they have very little to do with 9/11 or anything else historical, social, or political. I’m just suggesting that that may be were some of the awful post 9/11 cultural traits we now have are nicely ensconced. Just a hypothesis.
This is a piece I wrote in 2011, on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. (Originally posted here.)
I believe that the sauntering I refer to has diminished. But instead of sauntering, our local and county police departments seem to have taken up a different hobby: Shooting unarmed people of color. I think the problems underscored in this essay are mostly worse now than they were five years ago, and the argument I make here for what happened since 9/11/2001 is stronger, more clearly demonstrated by event. Also, the link between 9/11 and the Donald Trump candidacy is as clear as a brand new picture window right after the window washers left.
I’ve made minor edits, but left time references as they were five years ago. This will not affect you reading of this post.
Happy Anniversary 9/11
A former engineering student, on seeing film of the World Trade Center towers collapse on September 11th, 2001, expressed surprise. He told a friend that he would have thought that on being hit with jumbo jets, the two or three immediately affected floors of the tower would have been destroyed but the structures would remain standing, or at most the floors above the impact sites could possibly collapse due to melting support beams but the lower floors would stand. The complete collapse, above and below the impact sites, of both of the structures was a surprise to him, given his engineering training.
Those remarks were made shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Almost ten years later the same man who made these remarks was shot to death by US special forces in a raid on a residential compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad. He was, of course, Osama bin Laden. (Did you know that a disproportionate number of terrorists have engineering degrees?)
Many have spoken of the Post Patriot Act world, affecting day to day life in America, the wars, our treatment of our fellow humans at Gitmo and untold secret prisons around the world, the rise of the most expensive bureaucracy ever, all that. Icons of post 9/11 loom over us largely, and also exist in a small way in every nook and cranny of day to day life. And it rarely makes sense.
I once told you about a rural Iowan, who felt trapped and scared in the Big City, calling an elderly African American homeless wheel chair bound gentleman a “Terrorist” because she had never seen a homeless black wheelchair bound man so, of course, he must be something scary and scary = terrorist. That was an example of regular people substituting mundane daily fears, in this case, the “inner city” the “Black man” and I suppose “Wheel chairs” … oh, and we were in a “deli” run by “middle eastern people” so there was that too … with the largely made-up bogeyman of “Terrorist.”
One day last summer criminals drove down our street and carried out a criminal act before our very eyes, so we called 911. The police showed up way too late to matter and with way too many cops to make me think they were anything but frightened to go out alone, and the first thing they did was to demand to see my identification. I’m standing in my yard at the Weber, coals hot, brats cooking, a long bbq style fork in my hand and an apron that says “A Man and his Grill” on it and the cop is asking me for my identification.2 I blew him off with a stern look, and he went away. (Our cops are fairly meek. That would not have worked everywhere.) But that has become the norm: When the cops show up, you better assume we live in a police state, or be you’ll be assuming the position. Yes, folks, more and more people are being treated just like black folk in this country always have been. That should tell you something. One step backwards. Then a few more steps backwards. Now you know what that’s like if you are white, except you don’t because it is worse if you are black. #BLM.
I used to be a guy who called 911, when appropriate, and probably more than others on average. Now, I only call 911 if someone is in physical danger or needs medical attention. If I’m going to get shaken down for helping the coppers, the coppers can help themselves, thank you.
When an accident happens, the First Responders show up and close more lanes than they need to and they saunter. Instead of rushing in and managing the situation safely and effectively, they saunter around in full view of the drivers who are all forced over onto the shoulder to get by the scene. One day I sat in traffic for a half hour going north on State Route 169, and for the last six or seven minutes of that I could clearly see the two fire trucks that were blocking most of the lanes of traffic and the first responders sauntering around with absolutely nothing going on, no debris, no inured citizens, no other vehicles, nothing on the road to clean up, no “investigation” in progress, and they were passing around coffee. I’m sure there were donuts somewhere. I’m a fairly observant person and I’m not especially paranoid, and I’m pretty sure that I’m right: Post 911 first responders think they are the shit because hundreds of them died in the World Trade Center. This change in status and attitude is seen everywhere in our culture, I don’t need to convince you of that. Here, I’m just adding in that extra bit of unnecessary and costly sauntering at scenes that should be cleared. Because the cultural details matter even when they are small.
Do you know that during the late 1960s, when the US was in the throes of an unpopular war and a on the edge of revolution at home, there were an average of well over one hijacking of a commercial airplane flying out of a US based airport every month? Do you know what the reaction to that was? Metal detectors, and eventually baggage screening. Society did not change. It just got slightly harder, but not much harder, to get onto an airplane. Post 9/11 changes have been enormous and far reaching and pervasive. Now, I’m not trying to equate, or even compare, the scores of hijackings in the late 1960s and early 1970s with 9/11 and related acts (such as the attack on the Cole and the earlier WTC bombing, etc). There is no way to make that comparison. What I am trying to compare is the reaction, then vs. now. And, I’m not even comparing the reaction, exactly. What I’m trying to point out here is that in the 60s, the governmental and societal reaction to a significant spate of hijackings was to address airport security. The more recent reaction to 9/11 was to shift all of society and almost every aspect of American culture, the activities of every government department and agency, the expectations and rule sets, the budgets, the procedural manuals, and everything else to a paranoid modality and to institute what is essentially a low-level police state. That’s a difference worth noting. And worth complaining about.
Generation 9/11. History will be at least a little embarrassed by us.
Recently, we’ve been discussing the State Mandated Recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools. The reason this is becoming increasingly enforced around the US is because of various state laws passed in time to be in place for today’s anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, or more generally as part of a post 9/11 culture. In one of our local schools, students had interesting responses to this happening on their turf, expressed in a school paper’s “debate” layout. The printed views were even … same number for and same number against. Those against the pledge requirement made all the usual and generally quite convincing arguments and did a great job. Those in favor of the jingoistic approach were, well, jingoistic, but, with an interesting and very positive twist; Most of them gave sway to atheists and agnostics. They said that they fully supported people leaving off the “under god” part and totally understood why they might do that. And none of the pro-pledge opinions were dripping with religious commentary or reference. It is important to note that of all the high schools in the region, the one to which I refer to is in the top four or five with respect to conservatism of the area served, and in the top two with respect to per capita wealth of the residents, and is probably the least diverse district in the state.
And that is interesting because the average high school kid is about 16 years old, meaning that they were 6 when the 9/11 attacks happened, and therefore, the attacks themselves are not necessarily part of their own cultural composition to the same degree that it is with older folk. These are kids that grew up in the post 9/11 world without necessarily feeling the powerful shock and disbelief that many of us felt, followed by whatever fear or rage or helplessness or sense of dread or revenge that affected so many. The bad news is that this generation has become accustom to a much, much lower standard of freedom than many older people have, but this also means that when they confront this lack of freedom they may be more willing to rebel against it because they related less directly to the Defining Moment.
Sauntering firemen and cocky police officers are not the end of the world and they are not the Nazi’s or the Bradbury’s Salamander. They are, rather, puddles of dried blood from a minor wound. When you get into a bad accident, you may get a major wound that could kill or maim you, but you will also get a lot of minor wounds that on their own would not mean much. But you know that the accident was truly traumatic when the minor wounds add up to a plethora but are uncounted or ignored because they are just background. Sauntering firemen, cocky police officers, and Iowans who label homeless wheel chair bound African American old guys as “terrorists” are the tiny scrapes and bruises on a battered body.
And now might be a good point to ask the question, “What has risen from the ashes of the 9/11 attacks?” There was much talk at the time, and since then, and again today, about how great America is, how great Americans are, and how we will move forward and become better and stronger and so on and so forth. But it is just talk. What has happened instead is something entirely different.
The giddy fear and sense of dread that comes from a violent moment clouds the mind, of the individual or more broadly but also the collective social mind. The disorientation that caused that lady from Iowa to mistake the wheel chair bound homeless man for a “terrorist” represents an internal derailing of logic. The guard rail is down, the road is slippery, and rational thought has spun not just into the ditch but across the highway into oncoming traffic. The playbook has become garbled and the Quarterback is running the wrong way. The general, gone mad, is locked up on the army base with the launch codes. Twelve Angry Men, Lord of the Flies … stop me before I metaphor again! I think you get the point. There are a lot of people who benefit from our present social pathology, and that surely has been a factor. But also, it is simply a social pathology that we are experiencing, a terrorist victory, a lack of character on our part as a nation.
But the scary part is what comes out of it, and by now you have probably guessed my point. The Tea Party and things like the Tea Party. Strongly held anti-social illogical destructive beliefs with no hope of critical self evaluation, in a large and organized part of the population. It is obvious why this happened in the Republican Party and not the Democratic Party, but people on both sides of the political aisle have contributed. Literalist, libertarian, paranoid, self-centered, easily frightened, reactionary, willfully unintelligent, deluded in self worth and unmovable in conviction and belief despite all evidence to the contrary. The lady from Iowa, the sauntering firemen, the sheeple who welcome being harassed by the TSA agents at the gate, the people who are happy to click “I agree” when confronted with a 43 page EULA that, somewhere in there, tells you the thing you just bought and paid for is not yours; A general social willingness to be told what to do, fear of not being told what to do, cynicism that we can think of what to do on our own, and utter disbelief that collective progressive action any longer has potential or meaning.
The little puddles of drying blood are everywhere, splatter evidence not from the 9/11 attacks but from our national and social flailing about and rending of cloth and flesh as aftermath. It isn’t just that the terrorist won on that day; It is much much worse than that. First they beat us, then they recruited us to do ourselves in.
And yes, in this latest revision of my perennial post, I am drawing the line between 9/11 and Trump.
Happy Anniversary 9/11
1Apparently there is some question as to whether or not Osama bin Laden was actually an engineering student, but we’ll roll with it for the present purposes. Here’s the video of him making the remarks I paraphrased:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkdFNLqJajM&w=400&h=330]
2I’m exaggerating. There was no apron. But I was wearing my Darwin I Think Cap.
Pinker “How The Mind Works” cheap
This is not my favorite book, because I think the subtitle should be “No, it doesn’t Steve” … but How the Mind Works
My Review of Hillary Clinton’s Book Part I
Before discussing What Happened
First, about me.
I supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election because I did not want Donald Trump to be president.
During the primary, which was not the 2016 election, I seriously had a hard time deciding between the various candidates (Clinton and Sanders). On an issue by issue basis, I preferred Sanders’ position over Clinton. However, on the issues about which I have an informed view (climate change and energy related, and education) by view was different from both, and the difference between Sanders and Clinton was smaller than the difference between either of them and me.
I decided early on during the primary to support the candidate that was likely to win the nomination as soon as I was pretty sure who that was. In order to facilitate that, I developed a model predicting the primary outcome. At the very outset, Clinton was predicted to win, but we needed to pass through several actual primaries to have confidence in that. In the end, it turns out that my model predicted almost every primary outcome to within a few percentage points, often getting the outcome exactly correct, and predicted the winners very well (when a primary is a half point difference, the difference between a very good prediction and the actual outcome is literally a coin toss). A very small number of primaries were different from what I predicted in magnitude, and I never made predictions using my model for Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and the various territories (the model could not work in those areas). (I made predictions, but not based on my model.)
It became clear to me that Clinton was going to win the primary long before I openly stated that. I avoided stating it because I knew that would cause an unfair and obnoxious reaction from many Sanders supporters. So I waited until a blueberry muffin would have the brains to see who was going to win. In retrospect that was a mistake because none of those folks I was worried about ever got smarter than a blueberry muffin anyway.
So, to summarize, I supported Sanders and Clinton both, liked them both, avoided being mean to either one of them, attended fundraisers for both, attended rallies by both, but all along I knew Clinton was the more likely nominee.
I want to add something else about Sanders vs. Clinton. I regarded Sanders non-incrementalism as better than Clinton’s incrementalism for many but not all issues. I Think both candidates were flawed in having one or the other of a strategy. I know because I’m much smarter than a blueberry muffin that there are times for incrementalism and times for revolution. I also knew it was time for more revolution in two or three areas (such as the energy transition and health care). That’s why I leaned more towards Sanders than Clinton with respect to that philosophy.
Having said that, I felt that Clinton was the more competent and more likely to simply do a good job as president, and I had no sense whatsoever as to how Sanders would do with foreign policy. I did, however, have confidence and reason to believe that Sanders would have come up to the challenge of foreign policy excellence, and Clinton have put the hammer down on certain issues, casting aside the incrementalism.
Now, a quick word about Hillary Clinton.
Clinton was a gubernatorial first lady, and a presidential first lady. She was a trained lawyer and political activist fighting hard fights. She brought the whole idea of public preschool to the US and did more for health care reform, including and especially for children than any other individual until Obamcare. Then, she was an effective and much liked Senator and an excellent Secretary of State. She then became the first woman to win a major party nomination for president, won the popular vote, and probably would have won the election were it not for Russian meddling.
After her loss, she withdrew from public view for over half a year.
Then she wrote a book, What Happened
Then, a lot of people felt compelled to tell this woman to shut her pie hole based on this book.
Finally, my review of the book:
I don’t have one. The book is not published yet. I don’t intend to say anything about the book until I’ve read it (I pre-ordered it
Disagree with the contents of this book you haven’t read, if you can manage to eventually read it and be fair and not a cherry picker with your opinion. But do not, I repeat, do not, tell her to shut up. That’s what Republicans do, that’s what dictators do. That’s what the original American Patriots did, who burned literature they didn’t like and physically assaulted the authors, and burned their homes, back before we got civilization.
I’ll tell you this: I am very interested in what happened during the last election. I’ve written quite a bit about it, I’m writing more about it. Why would I not want Clinton’s point of view?
Stay tuned for Part II of this review, in which I … actually review What Happened
(PS: If you didn’t know that bit about the original American Patriots you must read THIS BOOK. 
Three Chances To Flip A Red District Blue
I know a lot of you are interested in local elections. There are three special elections coming up Tuesday that you might want to know about, and possibly lend some support to, or at least, watch. The candidates are shown above. They are:
<li><a href="http://www.kathrynrehner.com/">Kathryn Rehner</a></li>
<li><a href="https://jacobrosecrants.com/">Jacob Rosekrants</a></li>
Manga Guide to Microprocessors: Excellent tech graphic novel
It has been a long time since I’ve written any machine or assembler code, and it is a rare day that I hand construct a logic circuit using transistors. But it is comforting to know that these skills and the knowledge associated with them still reside in some form or another in the world of microprocessors.
The Manga Guides published by No Starch Press and written by a wide range of authors manga-based graphic novels on diverse topics in science, math, statistics, and technology. I’ve reviewed several here (see this post for a partial list of some of the other guides). And the newest entry to this growing and rather large and excellent library is The Manga Guide to Microprocessors
This book is really thorough, packing in piles of details about computers, focusing on the microprocessor level technology but covering a lot of related things as well such as memory and data storage and programming, with a whole section on controllers.
But this information is embedded in a story, as is the case with all the Manga guides.
This is the story of Ayumi, a master chess player who is beaten by a computer. She engages with the computer’s programmer, Kano, in a quest to learn all she can about her nemesis.
The book has three modes. One is a standard manga graphics novel sequence of frames with the main story. That is most of the book. The other is a more detailed conversation between iconic versions of the protagonists, in which detail that would be difficult to easily convey in pure cartoon form is gone over. The third is a retrospective or detailed section at the end of each chapter which is lightly illustrated, text heavy, and serves to contextualize the previous material.
I strongly recommend this book.
Here is what the various modes look like:
Back to School Science and Culture Stuff
I usually write my annual back to school post earlier than this, but I was distracted by various events. There are three themes here.
1) You are a science teacher and I have some stuff for you.
2) You have a student in a school and you want to support the school’s science teacher.
3) You have a student-offspring or elsewise and are looking for a cool back to school gift.
First, for themes 1 and 2, a mixture of traditional back to school blog posts and some items that may be useful and happen to be on sale at the moment so now’s your chance.
My For Teachers Page has posts providing some science content in evolutionary biology (about Natural Selection and some other topics)
On the same page are essays on teaching philosophy, supporting life science teachers, and evolution and creationism in the classroom, including this famous video.
Books that teachers might find helpful. Consider sending your kids in to school with one of them, focusing on evoluton-creationism and climate change-denial:
Classic text on fighting creationism: Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction
This book should be on the shelf or in the classroom for every teacher in science, or even social science. It is essentially the highly digestable (and illustration rich) version of the IPCC report on the scientific basis for climate change, written by one of that report’s famous authors: Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change
Teachers and parents of kids in school are in the trenches in the war on science. So you need to know what the war on science is and how to fight it. So, read Shawn Otto’s book The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It
The Manga books on science and math. See this review of Regression Analysis, where you’ll find a list of others. Most recent and hot off the presses is The Manga Guide to Microprocessors
A handful of recent science for various ages (Links are to my reviews):
The Outdoor Science Lab for Kids
Monarch Butterflies and Milkweed: An amazing new book
The Grand Canyon: Monument To An Ancient Earth. Great new book.
And finally, how to not get caught plagiarizing, and what does that pillow that says “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops” really mean? Not what you think!
And now for the fun part, the toys. Amazon is having a huge sale on refurbished devices that you may want to have. I assume they are getting ready for the holidays or something. Go to this link to see what they are
I myself got a Kindle Paperwhite E-reader 
I’m seriously thinking about getting Amanda one of these refurb-Kindle paperwhites. She likes the Kindle just enough for a refurbished one, maybe not enough for a new one…
At the very least, when you meet your teacher at the beginning of the school year, say to them what I say or something like it. “If you ever get hassled by anyone — parent, administration, other teachers — about teaching real science, let me know, I’ll be your best ally. Of course, if you are a science denier or a creationist so the situation is turned around, let me know, I’ll be your worst nightmare …” Then kind of pat them on the shoulder, flip your cape to one side, get on your motorcycle, and drive off.
Top fossil fuel producers caused half of global warming, third of sea level rise
I’ll just put this item from UCS here for your interest:
Study Finds Top Fossil Fuel Producers’ Emissions Responsible for as Much as Half of Global Surface Temperature Increase, Roughly 30 Percent of Global Sea Level Rise
Findings Provide New Data to Hold Companies Responsible for Climate Change
WASHINGTON (September 7, 2017)—A first-of-its-kind study published today in the scientific journal Climatic Change links global climate changes to the product-related emissions of specific fossil fuel producers, including ExxonMobil and Chevron. Focusing on the largest gas, oil and coal producers and cement manufacturers, the study calculated the amount of sea level rise and global temperature increase resulting from the carbon dioxide and methane emissions from their products as well as their extraction and production processes.
The study quantified climate change impacts of each company’s carbon and methane emissions during two time periods: 1880 to 2010 and 1980 to 2010. By 1980, investor-owned fossil fuel companies were aware of the threat posed by their products and could have taken steps to reduce their risks and share them with their shareholders and the general public.
“We’ve known for a long time that fossil fuels are the largest contributor to climate change,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, lead author and director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “What’s new here is that we’ve verified just how much specific companies’ products have caused the Earth to warm and the seas to rise.”
The study builds on a landmark 2014 study by Richard Heede of the Climate Accountability Institute, one of the co-authors of the study published today. Heede’s study, which also was published in Climatic Change, determined the amount of carbon dioxide and methane emissions that resulted from the burning of products sold by the 90 largest investor- and state-owned fossil fuel companies and cement manufacturers.
Ekwurzel and her co-authors inputted Heede’s 2014 data into a simple, well-established climate model that captures how the concentration of carbon emissions increases in the atmosphere, trapping heat and driving up global surface temperature and sea level. The model allowed Ekwurzel et al. to ascertain what happens when natural and human contributions to climate change, including those linked to the companies’ products, are included or excluded.
The study found that:
<li>Emissions traced to the 90 largest carbon producers contributed approximately 57 percent?of the observed rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, nearly 50 percent of the rise in global average temperature, and around 30 percent of global sea level rise since 1880.</li>
<li>Emissions linked to 50 investor-owned carbon producers, including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Peabody, Shell and Total, were responsible for roughly 16 percent of the global average temperature increase from 1880 to 2010, and around 11 percent of the global sea level rise during the same time frame.</li>
<li>Emissions tied to the same 50 companies from 1980 to 2010, a time when fossil fuel companies were aware their products were causing global warming, contributed approximately 10 percent of the global average temperature increase and about 4 percent sea level rise since 1880.</li>
<li>Emissions traced to 31 majority state-owned companies, including Coal India, Gazprom, Kuwait Petroleum, Pemex, Petroleos de Venezuela, National Iranian Oil Company and Saudi Aramco, were responsible for about 15 percent of the global temperature increase and approximately 7 percent of the sea level rise between 1880 and 2010.</li>
“Until a decade or two ago, no corporation could be held accountable for the consequences of their products’ emissions because we simply didn’t know enough about what their impacts were,” said Myles Allen, a study co-author and professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford in England. “This study provides a framework for linking fossil fuel companies’ product-related emissions to a range of impacts, including increases in ocean acidification and deaths caused by heat waves, wildfires and other extreme weather-related events. We hope that the results of this study will inform policy and civil society debates over how best to hold major carbon producers accountable for their contributions to the problem.”
The question of who is responsible for climate change and who should pay for its related costs has taken on growing urgency as climate impacts worsen and become costlier. In New York City alone, officials estimate that it will cost more than $19 billion to adapt to climate change. Globally, adaptation cost projections are equally astronomical. The U.N. Environment Programme estimates that developing countries will need $140 billion to $300 billion annually by 2030 and $280 billion to $500 billion annually by 2050 to adapt.
The debate over responsibility for climate mitigation and adaptation has long focused on the “common but differentiated responsibilities” of nations, a framework used for the Paris climate negotiations. Attention has increasingly turned to non-state actors, particularly the major fossil fuel producers.
“At the start of the Industrial Revolution, very few people understood that carbon dioxide emissions progressively undermine the stability of the climate as they accumulate in the atmosphere, so there was nothing blameworthy about selling fossil fuels to those who wanted to buy them,” said Henry Shue, professor of politics and international relations at the University of Oxford and author of a commentary on the ethical implications of the Ekwurzel et al. paper that was published simultaneously in Climatic Change. “But circumstances have changed radically in light of evidence that a number of investor-owned companies have long understood the harm of their products, yet carried out a decades-long campaign to sow doubts about those harms in order to ensure fossil fuels would remain central to global energy production. Companies knowingly violated the most basic moral principle of ‘do no harm,’ and now they must remedy the harm they caused by paying damages and their proportion of adaptation costs.”
Had ExxonMobil, for example, acted on its own scientists’ research about the risks of its products, climate change likely would be far more manageable today.
“Fossil fuel companies could have taken any number of steps, such as investing in clean energy or carbon capture and storage, but many chose instead to spend millions of dollars to try to deceive the public about climate science to block sensible limits on carbon emissions,” said Peter Frumhoff, a study co-author and director of science and policy at UCS. “Taxpayers, especially those living in vulnerable coastal communities, should not have to bear the high costs of these companies’ irresponsible decisions by themselves.”
Ekwurzel et al.’s study may inform approaches for juries and judges to calculate damages in such lawsuits as ones filed by two California counties and the city of Imperial Beach in July against 37 oil, gas and coal companies, claiming they should pay for damages from sea level rise. Likewise, the study should bolster investor campaigns to force fossil fuel companies to disclose their legal vulnerabilities and the risks that climate change poses to their finances and material assets.
The Link between Russia and White Supremacy in the White House
It is very rare that I find myself yelling at the TV when Rachel Maddow is on. She is very good at historically contextualized nuanced well informed analyses. But when I watched a segment of last night’s show (on the Internet, I have no cable) I was shocked to see that she missed something really important. If, that is, it is real.
In the segment below, she makes the point that there are two “clear through lines” in the whole Trump thing. One is the love of Russia and Putin by Trump, his unwavering stance that Russia and Putin can do no wrong. The other is the consistent “vehement antipathy towards immigrants”, clearly part of a white supremacists strategy, with respect to who has been appointed to various positions, the things Trump has said, and the policies attempted. The difference, Rachel notes, between these two separate through lines is the apparent novelty and strangeness of the Russia theme, while the racist trope has deep roots with Trump.
Here, I think, is what she missed: They are not two separate through lines. They are two faces of the same coin. The Russian oligarchs are white supremacists too.
This is underscored by the news that just came out that Russian entities had purchased ads on Facebook during the last election, described this way: “Most of the ads focused on pumping politically divisive issues such as gun rights and immigration fears, as well as gay rights and racial discrimination.”
There are all sorts of reasons Russia wants to control the US presidency and state department. There seem to be some great economic benefits to Trump for selling the government to Putin, something we will be forced to assume happened if even a small number of the accusations emerging are true. But, there is also the potential of the two main actors and their associates having a common philosophy about race. This would not be the first time dictators or would be dictators bonded over such things.
I could be wrong. Am I wrong? I suppose time will tell.
Erasing history by removing monuments and renaming things
This is a response to “Removing statues of historical figures risks whitewashing history: Science must acknowledge mistakes as it marks its past,” a commentary published in Nature. For the most part, the commentary reads like a caution to not un-name things and not remove monuments in at least some if not many cases, though it is a bit more nuanced than that. What is needed, in Nature, is a different position: Find memorials (statues or things named) to scientists who carried out horrible acts such as infecting countless people who are members of repressed groups in order to study disease, and tear down the monuments and remove the names from the buildings, scholarships, and so on. Nature should not be trolling on this issue. Nature should be clear. In any event, the editorial engendered the following thoughts by me:
We have come to fetishize monuments of a certain kind, and the naming of things, but this is not as well supported an approach as it may seem. It is in fact temporary, ephemeral, and named things and monuments have no special right to exist eternally.
At least in the united states, many many things, including rooms, parking lots and buildings, or dates, such as days, weeks, or months, and various other entities, are ever named after any person are named temporarily. Every day is somebody’s day, streets are renamed by mayors to commemorate a visiting dignitary, and so on. I’m sure most naming events are of this temporary nature, often lasting days or a week or so. Often buildings are named after someone, but then a major refurbishing involves a new name or even no name.
Also, we have this thing we do where we name buildings after corporations. So, since Target is the big corporation in Minnesota, you can go to Target Field, or Target Stadium, or Target Center, or Target, or Target Hall, depending on if you want to watch football, baseball, hockey, go shopping, or attend a literary event. (And they are all within walking distance of each other.) In this day and age, corporations shamelessly name everything after themselves.
So, on one hand, we don’t take naming seriously, and on the other hand we have cheapened the process to an embarrassing degree. So, why are people trying to protect the fact that a scholarship is named after the mastermind behind the Tuskegee study? Or that a park downtown is named after someone who ordered the massacre of of hundreds or thousands in order to take their land?
The erection of the sort of monument we make today and the naming of things we name today are practices with historical roots, but not especially deep roots. In fact,it is mainly a western and post-medieval practice, which puts it at only a few hundred years at the oldest. Perhaps we are leaving an era in which we assume stasis of status among the honored elite and occasional special waif, to an era where we realize we can’t trust the present to be quite so demanding of what future history says about us. Aside from the special case of dead or missing soldiers, maybe we are entering an era where we should not name or enstatuefy anything, just in case. And no, I’m not joking. This isn’t funny.
The permanency of something like a monument to Christopher Columbus or Thomas Parran was never in a contract with those individuals or their supporters, and the long term meaning of any such thing is non-existent without subsequent reification. I know a lot of “Gusties” (graduates of Gustavus Adolphus College, in Minnesota) and every one of them can give at least a vague idea of who Gustavus Adolphus was (though at a conference at the college a few years ago few could pick him out of a lineup provided by one of the speakers). They are told about him during orientation and at plenty of other times, just like Harvard students are told about the largely irrelevant historical figure John Harvard during their first tour of the place. But I’ve yet to meet a single Gusty who can identify William Dodd even though they have all walked hundreds of times by the monument erected to commemorate his most important accomplishments. That particular monument is never engaged in a ceremony or pointed at or to, or referenced, by anyone giving a tour or writing a pamphlet about the place, or anything. You can’t even find it on Wikipedia. Therefore, while it (barely) exists, it’s commemoration, as it were, simply does not. Poor Dodd.
For the very reason that the meaning of a memorial is generated afresh every time the memorial is involved in action or ceremony, and otherwise the thing has little meaning at all, when the life and accomplishments of a person or the deeds of a movement or any other aspect of some historical thing are re-evaluated, only the perniciously old fashioned or nefariously motivated seem to lean on the crutch of historic preservation.
The above mentioned editorial in Nature demonstrated Nature’s utter lack of understanding of anything outside the perspective of British Imperialism, which is kind of funny because it is a science magazine and should transcend such things. Even the British are not “immune,” Nature laments, from the world wide efforts to trash history, with a statue of Cecil John Rhodes almost (but not quite) removed from somewhere on hallowed English land! The editorial implies that the removal of some of the statues that are currently being removed in the US erases history. No. The removal of statues erected at the behest and sometimes with the funding of organizations like the KKK recognizes history. It recognizes an ugly history, and it recognizes the fact that finally, even as we have a White Supremacist regime in the White House (or because of it) we will now identify and find that evil act and erase the act itself.
The Nature commentary ignorantly suggests installing a plaque next to offending memorials. The author(s) of the piece did not do their research. This has been done, it didn’t’ work. It could work, it might work, here and there or now and then, but generally, it has not. The statues removed from parks in New Orleans last year had previously been so marked, and in one case, moved to a new location as though that somehow cleansed it of it’s Klan history. That did not stop the statues from being obnoxious and offensive, and they needed to be removed anyway.
Nobody loves historic preservation more than I do. My move many years ago to Minnesota resulted in many happy things and a handful of great annoyances, and one of those annoyances is that preserving the buildings and artifacts of history are acts not appreciated by more than a tenth of a percent of the people here. But preserving intentional insults to repressed people, as is the case with American “Civil War monuments” designed for that purpose, is inappropriate. Monuments to eugenicists and holocaust perpetrators are a little different because they were often erected for honestly good reasons by hopelessly ignorant people. But we know stuff now. Monuments, streets, buildings, and scholarships named after the designers of unethical medical experiments, or imperialist responsible for mass murder, should generally be removed in almost all cases. Save a few special ones, put up the plaques, maybe. But mostly, maybe not.
See: Taking down New Orleans’ monuments: Not what you think.
Anti-Science Political Hack Named To Run NASA
First, please take two minutes to watch and listen to this, in order to calibrate:
Now, remove all liquid containing vessels from the vicinity, put on your head-desk helmet gear, and watch this:
Then, behold the fact that Jim Bridenstine, who has demanded that President Obama apologize for believing that global warming is real and important, is being appointed to run NASA.
By the way, global warming did not stop in 2003
No surprise here, planetary warming does not care about the election. Now including October data. pic.twitter.com/SEUbaNRaxT
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) November 15, 2016
See this post at Think Progress and this post at Get Energy Smart for more.
Feel like signing a petition? This is the one you should sign.
Upcoming D v R challenges
There has been a trickle of state or federal level races pitting Democrat against Republican, which potentially serve as a barometer for how politics will actually play out on the ground over the next 18 months or so under the Trump Regime.
In my view, these races have shown two things.
1) Republicans beat Democrats even when all the available evidence strongly suggests that the Republican Party shouldn’t even be allowed to exist by any logical analysis of democracy and free society, and the Republicans continue to try as hard as they can to hurt the largest number of people.
2) Democrats have a much stronger than expected showing, indicating that Republicans are on the run and a big change is a coming.
The fact that these two observations are both true and in total conflict with each other should worry you.
Anyway, there are some more races coming up and I thought you might like to know about them.
In Oklahoma, Democrats have already flipped two Republican districts this year, and now, Democrat Jacob Rosecrants was defeated in 2016 by the Republican incumbant (Scott Martin) in House District 46, by a pretty big margin (60:40). But practice makes perfect, and Rosecrants is running again for the same seat in a general election called for September 12.
In Mississippi, Republicans have a super majority in the House, which means they are able to inflict the maximum possible damage that body can manage. Democratic candidate Kathryn Rehner is running in a special election, in House District 102. The Republican incumbent in that district left office to become mayor of Hattiesburg. Rehner is a social worker who is strong on education, and has explicitly stepped up to stop Trump. In the election, Republican Barker won by neary 3/4ths, so you can regard this as a strong Republican district.
New Hampshire has a somewhat unusual legislature. First, it is called “The General Court.” Second, it is huge, one of the largest legislative bodies in the world. There are 400 members in the House of Representatives (Note: New Hampshire is so small, to put it on a postage stamp they have to blow it up first!) a given “district” may be represented by multiple individuals. Anyway, there are some five races open, some were held by Democrats, some by Republicans. So, the relevant outcome here will be more of a differential breakdown before and after. There may also be one state Senate seat open in NH as well.
There are two Democrats running to flip Republican seats in Florida, and apparently the Republicans are pouring money into these races. Annette Taddeo is running for Senate District 40. She had earlier been defeated for a house seat, and is the chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. She is running against Republican Jose Felix Diaz, and independent Christian “He-Man” Schlaerth. The seat is open because incumbent Republican Frank Artiles was forced to resign because he was too much of a Trumpish asshole. The politics here are uncertain and this may be a close race. Clinton beat Trump here by 17 points, but Rubio beat Murphy (but by only 4 points). I can’t tell if this He-Man dude is a spoiler and if so, for which party . He is an academic who gets low ratings on Rate my Professor (which may be meaningless). He appears to be a joke candidate, and may not be taken seriously.
Meanwhile, in the Florida House, Gabriela Mayaudon, running against Republican candidate Daniel Perez.
In South Carolina, Rosalyn Henderson Myers is running in House District 31 against Republicvan Michael Fowler, each trying to replace a Democrat who resigned citing health issues.